School Information System

Scott Johnson:

Dr. Sidney Bondurant has written to provide relevant background to “The supremacy of Mississippi.” Dr. Bondurant writes:

I read your Power Line post on Mississippi’s Literacy Based Promotion Act and the progress made in reading and math in our elementary schools. This act was passed during the administration of Governor Phil Bryant. I was Governor Bryant’s legislative liaison at this time. Laurie Todd-Smith, Ph.D., was the governor’s education policy advisor and we were the two primary “lobbyists” for the governor at the state legislature. Laurie is now working in the Trump Administration and I am retired. Governor Bryant now heads up a business development firm and I serve as a consultant to that firm.

It was not an easy sell. But most of the opposition came from the Democrats and not the Republicans. The public school lobby (district school superintendents, “The Parents Campaign,” the teachers’ union, and the mainstream media) fought against us vigorously. Black Democrats were the most vigorous. One told me that he automatically suspected that any proposal affecting public schools from white Republicans had some nefarious purpose. Charges of RACISM! were shouted on the House floor. I was told by one of those against the bill that I was trying to hold back black third grade kids to punish them. When I tried to explain that the retention part of the bill was to provide intensive help to those kids so that they had a better shot at success he would not believe me.

On final passage in the 122-member House there were 16 NO votes, all Black Democrats except for one white Democrat and two white Republicans. There were several Black Democrats who did vote for it here).

I told Governor Bryant when he signed the bill that I thought that act would be the most significant of his administration. The improvement in the education of Mississippi’s citizens will lead to economic benefits for the state and its citizens that will bring about the most positive changes since the Civil War.

Thank you for bringing attention about this subject to your readers.

Yours truly,

Sidney Bondurant, M.D.

——-

A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Jeffrey T. Denning∗ Rachel Nesbit† Nolan Pope‡ Merrill Warnick:

Average grades continue to rise in the United States, prompting discussion about the pos-sibility of grade inflation. However, we know very little about the consequences of gradingstandards for students. We study how grade inflating teachers affect students. First, we extend,develop, and validate teacher-level measures of grade inflation. We construct two measures ofgrade inflation, one that measures average grade inflation and another that measures whetherteachers are more likely to give a passing grade. These measures pass forecast bias tests com-mon in the teacher effects literature. We show that grade inflation is distinct from teachervalue-added, with grade inflating teachers having moderately lower cognitive value-added andslightly higher noncognitive value-added. Next, we consider the effects of grade inflation onfuture outcomes. Passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back, increaseshigh school graduation, and increases initial enrollment in two-year colleges. Mean gradeinflation reduces future test scores, reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school,reduces college enrollment, and ultimately reduces earnings.

Next, we consider the effects of grade inflation on future outcomes. Passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back, increases high school graduation, and increases initial enrollment in two-year colleges. Mean grade inflation reduces future test scores, reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school, reduces college enrollment, and ultimately reduces earnings.

——-1

More.

Nathaniel Hansford Last

There has been much discussion over the last 5 years on an alleged reading crisis in the United States and the western world (Hanford, 2022). The argument has essentially been that reading achievement scores are falling and that Balanced Literacy is to blame (Hanford, 2022). However, in my opinion the state of Math instruction and test scores is actually far, far worse. In this article, I will review the evidence that there is a systemic problem with Math Achievement.

The Decline

When the power goes out, stores close. It’s not because the lights go out. It’s because the average cashier can no longer calculate how much change to give, without the computer. This is not an isolated problem or weird quirk of our modern times; it’s a phenomenon that reflects a decline in overall Math ability.

———

2014: 21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math

How One Woman Rewrote Math in Corvallis

Singapore Math

Discovery Math

Connected Math (2006!)

Math Forum 2007

Washington Post:

The Supreme Court has the chance this week to save women’s sports, allowing states to restore a level playing field for girls by excluding biological men and thereby correcting one of the worst excesses of America’s cultural revolution.

Sarah Mervosh

Kindergartners arrived not knowing their letters from their numbers. After a few years in school, they were still far behind. A decade ago, just 12 percent of Hazlehurst students were reading on grade level.

Today, Hazlehurst has clawed that figure to 35 percent. And Mississippi has emerged as one of the best places in the country for a poor child to get an education.

Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.

Poverty remains a driving factor in student achievement, and wealthy states like Massachusetts still have the highest share of students proficient in reading and math.

But adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

“If you want to ask the question, ‘Which states are helping kids coming from difficult circumstances learn as much as they can?’ Mississippi is now doing much better than many other states, including wealthier states in affluent progressive areas,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank.

Mississippi’s gains have been confined mostly to the early years, where the state has focused its efforts. The system revolves around standardized testing, and the gains have not always persisted. By raw scores, Mississippi eighth graders still rank 41st on national tests for reading, and 35th for math.

Yet Mississippi has figured out something almost no other state has, and it has involved far more than just changing the way reading is taught, the most common explanation for its success.

Even as schools elsewhere have focused on issues like school funding, social justice and mental health in recent years, Mississippi schools like Hazlehurst have made academics their North Star.

———-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Becky Jacobs:

Students are on track to take classes in a new humanities building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall. And the athletics department plans to finish an indoor football practice facility next to Camp Randall Stadium this summer.

As those two projects wrap up in 2026, Wisconsin’s flagship public university also plans to break ground on a visitor and education center at the Lakeshore Nature Preserve, near Picnic Point.

Here are details about what campus and community members can expect from the new buildings:

HHS:

In the latest development of Operation Nightingale—a scheme that created an illegal licensing and employment shortcut for aspiring nurses—fraud-related charges have been filed against 12 defendants for their roles in selling fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts. In Phase I of Operation Nightingale, 30 defendants were charged and convicted by plea or at trial in 2023. According to court records, the defendants conspired to sell false nursing credentials—diplomas and transcripts fraudulently obtained from Florida-based nursing schools—to aspiring Registered Nurse (RN) and Licensed Nurse Practioner/Vocational Nurse (LPN/VN) candidates. Purchasers of the bogus documents used them to qualify for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), commonly known as the nursing board exam. Candidates who passed the exam became eligible for licensure in various states, and once licensed, obtained employment as nurses across the United States.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye:

This article is for undergraduate, master’s, and early-career professionals who regularly contact me for career advice about:

• What do economists do?
•  Is a PhD worth it?
• How do you prepare and apply?

Most of these students are first-generation students seeking answers to the above questions, career advice, or mentoring. However, I am unable to respond personally to all of their individual inquiries, so I decided to address many of these common questions in this article. In this piece, I will focus more on applying and preparing for a PhD in Economics.

Corrinne Hess:

Ploeger was removed from her position following Gilkey-Meisegeier’s arrest.

Sun Prairie Police Chief Kevin Warych said an incident in April involving Gilkey-Meisegeier and a student resulted in the dean being placed on administrative leave. But the allegations were not reported to either the Sun Prairie Police Department or the Dane County Child Protective Services as mandatory reporting laws require.

Another incident involving a different Sun Prairie School District staff member was also not reported by Ploeger, Warych said.

“Protecting children is not a priority, but it is our duty. It is the foundation of our work,” Warych said.

Ploeger’s attorney, Jason Luczak, preempted the announcement with a 2 p.m. press conference in Milwaukee. Ploeger was not in attendance.

“Her heart was always in the right place, and she was always trying to do the right thing for the children and trying to manage the situation,” Luczak said. “And frankly, there was no intent she had to protect someone. Her biggest priority has been to protect kids.”

Michael Kovrig:

After 1,800 days in mostly solitary confinement, the iconic voice for free speech faces more years as a political prisoner—unless advocacy and pressure can bring clemency

Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of “foreign collusion” and “sedition” after a national security trial that dragged on for more than two years. A mitigation hearing is scheduled for January 12; sentencing will follow, with life imprisonment possible. The New York Times, BBC, SCMP, and other media have extensive features on Lai this week.

DataRepublican (small r)

All long-lasting institutions drift toward it. Systems seek equilibrium and optimize for survival. Over time, survival becomes flattened as preserving internal coherence rather than fulfilling an external purpose. Once that happens, the institution closes itself off from external falsification.

The system no longer asks, Is this true? It asks, Is this compatible with what we already produce?

The current unrest in Minnesota is an example of an order that has reached equilibrium through mutual dependency between antagonistic subsystems.

After the Cold War, the Western world organized itself around a single moral injunction: Never again. Never again fascism. Never again totalitarianism. Never again a unified ideology capable of subordinating it to a single vision of man.

To prevent another Nazi Germany or another Soviet Union, the post–Cold War order built immunity to totalitarian ideologies.

Grand narratives were treated as dangerous. Politics was re-engineered away from totalizing visions and towards norms and institutional mediation.

For a time, this worked.

Maya Tekeli and Jeffrey Gettleman

Danish doctors put intrauterine devices into Greenlandic girls as young as 12 without their consent or knowledge. Some women were given injections that they claim left them infertile for life. When victims complained about severe pain, doctors refused to help, leading some to remove the IUDs themselves.

These were among the findings from a scathing report, released Tuesday, on Denmark’s past policy of forcing contraception on women and girls in Greenland, a practice that Danish officials now admit was wrong.

The report was based on personal testimonies, medical records and historical documents. Of 410 cases described in detail, 349 involved health complications.

Denmark colonized Greenland more than three centuries ago, and the gigantic island in the Arctic Ocean remains a Danish overseas territory. In the 1960s and 1970s, and to a lesser degree in the decades that followed, Danish doctors implanted IUDs in thousands of Greenlandic women and girls, in many cases without their permission.

Andrew Michta:

How did we get here? Simply put, our political class failed to appreciate why the United States triumphed over the Soviet Union. We won not because of the power of liberal ideals—though they were important additional enablers of American foreign and security policy against the Soviets—but because in 1947, when the Cold War competition was fully joined, our country possessed a massive industrial base, the global reserve currency, the largest gold reserves, half of global GDP, a navy larger than all the world’s navies combined, an expanding population and rapidly growing middle class, and a monopoly on atomic weapons.

True, over the course of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union (the latter for a period aligned with communist China), the balance began to shift somewhat. The economies of war-ravaged Europe and Asia recovered, and the relative power position of the United States would never approximate where the country was in 1947. Nonetheless, there was little question that in terms of the power indices of the era, America had an unmatched edge in every aspect of technology, research and development, manufacturing, and overall wealth when compared to its adversary. Few in the captive nations of Eastern Europe doubted that American free-market capitalism, and what the West represented more generally, was superior when it came to both wealth and freedom. What kept them mouthing communist slogans was the reality of being occupied by the Red Army and dragooned into the Warsaw Pact against the very America (and West) they admired. But we won largely because America’s hard power was undergirded by our unmatched industrial base and R&D institutions.

Yet we failed to grasp that the Soviet Union did not implode because the liberal democratic ideal overpowered the tenets of communism. Few argued at the time that we had won because our adversary could not match our industrial base and innovative research universities and labs—especially as we moved into the digital age—and that henceforth it should be the government’s sacred duty to preserve and protect advantages that took generations to build. The implosion of the Soviet empire was greeted by Washington’s intelligentsia as an ideological triumph par excellence. In a bizarre replay of the Bolshevist fiction about the universality of Marxist dogma, our elites post-1990 seemed certain that a new globalist age had dawned in which America’s sui generis history and political tradition would first claim a universal quality and ultimately dissolve in the new global order. At think tank conferences, political science conventions, and increasingly in government and Congress, our elites succumbed to the temptation to view 1990 not as marking the end of a long twilight struggle in which the nation’s industrial base and military alliances had ultimately carried the day, but rather as the culmination of an inexorable drive toward the fulfillment of a grand universalist promise. Francis Fukuyama’s thesis was transformed into the equivalent of now-discarded communist teleological reasoning, only this time built on liberal clichés, not Marxian canon.

J.D. Tuccille:

On November 3 of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule change allowing its agents to gather and store more biometric data on anybody associated with applications for “benefits” including family visas, Permanent Resident (green) Cards, and work permits. The DHS summary of the rule states, in part:

DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define “biometrics;” codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an “extraordinary circumstances” standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment…

According to the proposal, the purpose of gathering biometric data, including fingerprints, photographs, signatures, voice prints, ocular images, and DNA (which is heavily emphasized by DHS) is “identity management” to verify that people are who they say they are.

Tyler Cowen:

First, I gave a talk at University of Austin and also had some meetings there, including with students.  My talk was a practical guide on how to use AI to offer courses that a college or university otherwise cannot afford (especially important for smaller institutions).  I believe they will be putting it online.

My general sense was that U. Austin undergraduates are on a par with undergraduates at top five schools.  I do not think on the technical side they would compete with Stanford or MIT, but more generally…they were very impressive and asked excellent questions with real curiosity.  And seemed politically saner than typical Ivy League cohorts, though without being “mono” in any particular direction.  Here is Arnold Kling on UATX and its students.

Rahm Emanuel:

Mississippi went from 49th to 9th in their reading scores – known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama adopted the same (phonics) model and are seeing similar gains for their kids. It works. What are we waiting for?

We need the courage to stand by our kids. China is not holding back America’s kids. That’s on all of us. It’s time to put American children first.

———

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Alexander Shut:

Madison and its former city clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.

That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.

That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.

Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuitseeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.

The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.

In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”

Juan Siliezar,

A new study from researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health highlights a push from private equity investors into autism therapy centers across the nation.

Private equity firms acquired more than 500 autism therapy centers across the U.S. over the past decade, with nearly 80% of acquisitions occurring over a four-year span.

That’s according to a new study from researchers at Brown University’s Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research.

Study author Yashaswini Singh, a health economist at Brown’s School of Public Health, said the work highlights how financial firms are rapidly moving into a sensitive area of health care with little public scrutiny or data on where this is happening or why.

“The big takeaway is that there is yet another segment of health care that has emerged as potentially profitable to private equity investors, and it is very distinct from where we have traditionally known investors to go, so the potential for harm can be a lot more serious,” Singh said. “We’re also dealing with children who are largely insured by Medicaid programs, so if private equity increases the intensity of care, what we’re looking at are impacts to state Medicaid budgets down the road.”

Washington Post:

If the union really cares about justice, it should focus on teaching students how to read and write.

Usually New Year’s resolutions are a chance to ditch bad habits and make a change for the better, but the Chicago’s Teachers Union (CTU) is choosing to buck that convention as they resolve to more of the same in 2026. The union posted this week on social media that its resolution is to “speak truth to power” and committed to “defending Black and brown and immigrant communities who are targeted by federal agents,” as well as “fighting back against an administration trying to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and roll back civil rights protections.”

Those are lofty goals in a school district that can hardly teach kids to read and write. In 2025, 43 percent of Chicago’s third through eighth grade students were reading at grade level. Only 27 percent were proficient in math. Those are fundamental deficits that haunt kids into high school. In 11th grade, only 40 percent were proficient in reading and 25 percent in math on the ACT.

It’s hard to believe the union has students’ best interests at heart when its bosses continue to ignore the biggest problems. Poor test scores endure despite lower standards. Last summer, the state of Illinois lowered proficiency benchmarks on reading and math scores.

Effective instruction starts by showing up. For the fourth year in a row, chronic absenteeism among students stayed stuck near 40 percent, about 16 points higher than in 2019. Teachers are also playing hooky, with about 43 percent of educators missing 10 or more days of school, compared to 34 percent statewide. Teacher absences are a top predictor of student success.

Chad Aldeman:

Texas’ Alpha school combines AI with content mastery and innovative approaches to motivating students. It could be a model worth studying.

I spend my time looking at ways to improve public schools. So why have I been fascinated by a private school charging $40,000 a year in tuition? 

The AI-fueled Alpha program claims its students grow academically more than twice as fast as the national average, with only two hours of learning per day. Initially, I was skeptical. But after I read a parent review and a profile of school founder Mackenzie Price and principal Joe Liemandt, and listened to Liemandt on podcasts, I was intrigued both as a parent and as an education policy wonk. 

Alpha started as a small private school in Austin, Texas, in 2014 but now operates a growing network of 18 locations. Its AI tools are also in use in specialized gifted and talented programs, sports academies and a Montessori-like elementary school. As the network grew, it drew the attention of Liemandt, an Austin tech billionaire, who not only decided to send his kids there but stepped away from the industry, became the school’s leader and now says he plans to spend $1 billion to transform education. 

How? Mainly through its technology-enabled, personalized “two-hour learning” model. Alpha points to NWEA MAP Growth gains that are, on average, 2.6 times as large as other similarly scoring students make. In 2024-25 for example, the main Alpha campus had, depending on the grade level, 67% to 90% of students meeting their growth targets in math and 65% to 100% of students meeting their targets in English. 

Pieter Snepvangers:

People hated that four letter word’: Middlesbrough’s anger as Labour scraps Eton-backed free school

Scheme to help brightest children from deprived backgrounds scuppered by ‘socialist ideology’

They call Brian Sexton’s grandson the “talking calculator”. He is only nine years old, but his family takes it in turns to quiz him and watch and admire as he turns out the correct answers.

“He can do the square roots of any number you like,” Sexton beams. “He can multiply 117 by 144 by building the blocks in his head and then counting them back. Genius.”

Until last month, his family dreamt that he might one day go to Eton’s free sixth form college that was poised to open in the heart of Middlesbrough.

The proposed school, which was fronted by Eton College and Star Academies, a multi-academy trust, was expected to enrol 480 of the brightest pupils from deprived backgrounds and offer them a world-class education for free.

Although the school was approved in 2023 by the previous government and set to welcome its first 240 pupils last September, Labour entered office and immediately paused plans while it carried out a review.

Charles Murray

I recently published an autobiographical book, Taking Religion Seriously, about my decades-long evolution from agnosticism to eccentric Christianity. One of the many beliefs that I acquired during that evolution—to my surprise—is that I should not decide when to end my life. It was surprising because for years I not only approved of assisted suicide but was ready to take advantage of it myself. Since early in our marriage, I had an ongoing joke with my wife about her responsibility if I got old and was mentally losing it: She was supposed to know when the time had come to “put the white powder in my gin.” Suicide properly done, with help if necessary, seemed to me a good thing.

Now, when I read that New York will legalize assisted suicide, I am of two minds. As a policy analyst, I admire the bill that Governor Hochul will sign. It requires evidence of mental competence and voluntary initiative. It is limited to people with a clinically diagnosed disorder that gives them fewer than six months to live. The law requires that the person put the pill or potion in his or her own mouth and swallow it unassisted. 

As policy, it’s about as well crafted as such a law can be. As an option for me, no thanks. I’m going to stick it out.

Why? My answer is personal, but, writing as someone turning 83, facing death in a comparatively few years, I hope that it might also be useful to others.

Washington Post:

That’s a bold claim by the prosecutor. Political speech — including speech about elections, no matter how odious — is strongly protected by the First Amendment. It’s not unusual for politicians to take factual liberties. The main check on such misdirection is public scrutiny, not criminal prosecution.

Of course fraud is a crime. But that almost always involves dissembling for money, not political advantage. Smith’s attempt to distinguish speech that targets “a lawful government function” doesn’t work. Most political speech is aimed at influencing government functions.

Smith might think his First Amendment exception applies only to brazen and destructive falsehoods like the ones Trump told after losing the 2020 election. But once an exception is created to the First Amendment, it will inevitably be exploited by prosecutors with different priorities. Imagine what kind of oppositional speech the Trump Justice Department would claim belongs in Smith’s unprotected category.

Smith also said he makes “no apologies” for the gag order he tried to impose on Trump during the prosecution. The decision to criminally charge a leading presidential candidate meant the charges would feature in the 2024 campaign. Yet Smith fought to broadly limit Trump’s ability to criticize him or the prosecution in general, claiming such statements would interfere with the legal process.

Erin Gretzinger:

A proposed independent charter school in Madison has passed the first stage of the approval process to apply for charter status with the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office for Educational Opportunity, which has authorityunder state law to authorize and oversee new charter schools in the state

North Star Preparatory is seeking to provide a tuition-free high school that would be based on Madison’s north side. The school would serve students in 9th through 12th grade.

The school has until Jan. 12 to submit an application to begin the second phase of the approval process, according to Mark Pitsch, a Universities of Wisconsin spokesperson. Pitsch said the Office for Educational Opportunity hadn’t received the school’s application as of Thursday.

North Star Prep seeks to “promote punctual graduation, enhance engagement and develop career and community readiness,” according to its website. 

“Our mission is to reignite students’ passion for education by offering personalized, career-focused learning experiences that inspire, build skills and foster resilience,” the website says. “We are dedicated to providing the tools, support and guidance needed for all students to achieve on-time graduation and confidently pursue their future careers.”

While a board of directors page on the website says its members are “coming soon,” recent board meeting minutes list Nikole Sconiers, Rea Solomon and Kate Maselter as the founding members of North Star Prep.

———

Charters that operate outside of the taxpayer funded Madison K-12 system are not subject to its governance practices. The Madison school board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school in 2011….

———-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

heritage:

The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman—is its cornerstone.

As the most essential institution in society, every good thing in society flows from the family. Getting married, starting a family, and building a legacy are not just personal choices. They are the American Dream. The natural family—virtuous, faithful, and growing—is the center of American life. Stay-at-home moms are heroes, and involved fathers are vital. Both shape tomorrow’s leaders.

The weakening of the family as the cornerstone of our country has led to a loneliness, commitment, and demographic crisis that endangers both the American Dream and America’s place in the world. Conservatives can no longer stand by as the American family breaks down. We must propose bold, novel policy solutions that encourage family formation. Marriage and parenthood should not just be possible but should be desirable again. We seek an America where a husband, his wife, and their children are protected by law, encouraged by government, and supported by societal institutions so that they may prosper in peace and security, and pass on our heritage to subsequent generations.

More.

Matt Stoller:

A few days ago, Hunterbrook, a short-seller funded media outfit, released an investigative report showing what looks like a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation by the three largest health insurance companies. The allegation is that CVS, UnitedHealth Group, and Cigna are supposed to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for their patients. But instead, they collude with those pharmaceutical companies to force higher drug prices, and split the profits with them. It’s not a new charge. The Federal Trade Commission included this alleged scam in its complaint filed against these companies in September of 2024.

Chris Rickert:

Prosecutors will charge a former Sun Prairie West High School principal with two counts of failing to report child abuse, the city’s police chief said Friday.

The charges against Jennifer Ploeger come after a lengthy investigation sparked by allegations against a former West dean of students, Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier, who over the summer was brought up on state and federal child sex crime charges.

Under state law, teachers are mandated reporters, meaning they are required to immediately report suspected abuse or neglect by phone or in person to the local child protective services division, typically located in a county’s human services department.

Matt Barnum:

Learning declines have been substantial and pervasive.

Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.

Despite a small handful of relative bright spots, these declines have been remarkably widespread. Eighth grade math scores fell in almost every single state during this period; no states saw increases. Although schools that were closed longer during the pandemic tended to experience bigger declines, even those that quickly reopened have been hit hard by learning loss.

Insurrection Barbie:

“COPAL’s own statement thanks Omar and Klobuchar for their leadership and notes that these federal dollars will be invested in worker organizing and community power on Lake Street.”

Susan Du:

As the federal government broadened immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities, a network of neighborhood activists ramped up pushback by keeping tabs on ICE agents and lending aid to families in hiding.

Comunidades Organizando El Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL) launched its rapid response arm a year ago in response to President Donald Trump’s re-election, seeded by a $1 million grant from the Bush Foundation. More than 10,000 people have registered for its trainings, said Edwin Torres DeSantiago, manager of COPAL’s Immigrant Defense Network. Other organizations are offering variations.

While dramatic clashes between ICE and protesters have gotten the most attention, it’s the smallest aspect of a wider movement, Torres DeSantiago said. 

“It is after, before and the prolonged support that we provide to families navigating these dark days,” he said.

JD Vance:

The gaslighting is off the charts and I’m having none of it. This guy was doing his job. She tried to stop him from doing his job. When he approached her car, she tried to hit him.

A tragedy? Absolutely. But a tragedy that falls on this woman and all of the radicals who teach people that immigration is the one type of law that rioters are allowed to interfere with.

John Robb:

The larger organizational context for the incident.

These earlier incidents would have led to daily reminders at briefings, warnings from everyone, legal authorization (it’s assault with a deadly weapon), and specialized training (how to respond with deadly force, building muscle memory).

In short, the moment the car surged forward and pushed that agent with her bumper, the response was predictable.

Jonathan Turley:

During the Cold War, Soviet communists referred to American liberals as “useful idiots,” armchair revolutionaries who spouted proletarian slogans at cocktail parties. Zohran Mamdani and his newly appointed cadre engage in chest-pounding about their intentions to “seize the means of production” while living off their parents or working friends in high society.

Today, they are often young people who joined communist coffee klatches in college under the tutelage of academia’s “radical chic.”

They often reveal little actual historical or philosophical knowledge, which is an advantage if you are going to call for the replication of one of the least successful political theories in history.

Daniel Friedman:

One thing I have not seen a lot of discussion of is why Amy Klobuchar would consider leaving the Senate to run for governor when she is a top contender to replace Chuck Schumer as the leader of the Senate Democrats.

Klobuchar is the only political figure in Minnesota popular enough and powerful enough that her entrance into the race can prevent a contested Democratic primary, which would be a disaster for the Democrats.

Josh Brooks:

What the Right Wants: Psychotic leftist domestic terrorist tries to kill ICE agents! We should use more force.

What the Left Wants: Fascist NAZI psychopaths are murdering women and children! We should use more force.

Who actually wins: Minnesota politicians and bureaucrats who can spin this into a riot and continue to avoid accountability for fraud. Federal politicians who can use the flames to continue to avoid accountability for a billionaire child sex trafficking ring.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

Glenn Greenwald:

She was one of the lead lawyers in the key suit against the Biden Administration for violating the 1st Am by coercing Big Tech to censor critics and dissent.

and:

A primary theme of right-wing politics throughout the 1990s and into 2000s (not GOP politics, but right-wing politics) was vehement opposition to armed federal agents on US soil acting against US citizens (things like WACO and the Randy Weaver shootings illustrated that).

Then a GOP administration exploited 9/11 to create DHS, and now armed federal agents under DC’s control on US streets, operating against Americans, is a staple of right-wing politics.

——-

A chronological account of the standoff between the Trump administration and the state of Minnesota over fraud allegations and immigration enforcement.

Erin Gretzinger:

For over a decade, Sarah Elmore has encouraged students at Madison’s East High School to reach for the stars as a counselor for AVID, a college and career readiness program that stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination.

The AVID framework is used at thousands of schools across the country to help close opportunity gaps for students after high school. The program provides students support services and mentorship to help them pursue academically rigorous courses and prepare for college or the workforce.

Elmore works with about 350 students at East High, helping them connect with opportunities outside of the classroom and navigate their post-graduation options. This school year, she was recognized for that work in being named the inaugural recipient of Counselor of the Year for AVID’s Global Achievement Awards. AVID launched the awards this year in honor of its 45th anniversary.

“Sarah’s work shows exactly why AVID matters,” Mary Jankovich, the Madison school district’s executive director of college, career and community readiness, said in an announcementabout the award. “She helps students build the skills, confidence and vision they need for life after high school, and she does it with such heart. This award reflects the difference she makes every day.”

Olivia Herken:

The bill, SB120, was first introduced last March, and a companion bill was passed by the Assembly later that month. The legislation would require all Wisconsin school boards to adopt two policies, one on how a school keeps records of a student’s preferred name or pronouns, and another on how school staff may address a student.

Specifically, the record-keeping policy would require a principal to sign off on a student changing their name or pronouns on official school records, and the student must provide documentation that they legally changed their name. School boards would also need to establish an appeals process to challenge name and pronoun changes, and allow parents to weigh-in on the decision if the student is a minor.

School boards also would need to adopt a policy that prohibits school employees from referring to a minor student by a name or pronoun that doesn’t align with the student’s biological sex without written authorization from that student’s parent or legal guardian. The bill states that these protocols wouldn’t be needed if a student wanted to go by a shortened nickname or by their middle name.

Although the bill is likely to be vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers if it passes the Senate, the legislation would require school boards to adopt the policies by July 1, ahead of the next school year.

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Wispolitics

——-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Dawn Baumgartner:

“And we’re just trying to understand — was there something going on here, from the institutional standpoint, that maybe was too dangerous. Obviously, COVID was a significant world event. And we are the body over the UNC System, and so (we’re) taking a look at those things,” he said.

UNC spokesperson Kevin Best said Thursday when asked about the status of the legislature’s request that nothing has changed since its statement to The N&O in June, which was that due to state law, “any request made to an agency employee by Commission staff and any communication between Commission staff and an agency employee is confidential.”

“The University deeply values and appreciates its partnership with the General Assembly and is committed to legal compliance and transparency,” Best said.

U.S. Right to Know’s request denied by appeals court

According to the Court of Appeals decision, U.S. Right to Know describes itself as “an investigative research group that promotes transparency for public health, [which] has been investigating the origins of COVID19 and the virus that causes it.” The group requested public records of Baric’s work and associations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, told The N&O in an email that they are “disappointed” in the Court of Appeals result and are evaluating their “legal options and potential next steps.”

Jenna Rae:

Milwaukee Public Schools recently hired a senior financial officer from Minneapolis who was placed on administrative leave just days after his appointment, according to district documents and reports.

Ibrahima Diop, who served as the senior financial officer for Minneapolis Public Schools for the last decade, was hired by Milwaukee Public Schools on Dec. 18 as the Deputy Superintendent of Operations with an annual salary of $240,000.

However, this past Friday, the Minnesota Reformer reported that Diop and two other senior leaders in Minneapolis were put on administrative leave after the school board learned leaders failed to submit necessary financial paperwork to the state as the district faces a $25 million budget shortfall.

The situation mirrors Milwaukee Public Schools’ own financial challenges. In May 2024, MPS also failed to submit its financial records to the state, and the state threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars.

Arthur Brooks:

“DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies…policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.”

Two decades on, DEI programs have come under attack. Some of this criticism has involved a political backlash, but some has involved research questioning their effectiveness. As far back as 2016, Harvard Business Review published an article titled “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” showingthat, as generally practiced, DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies. Last year, psychologists reviewing the literature found that these policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.

Chris Rickert:

Sun Prairie School District administrators didn’t do enough to investigate allegations that now-former West High School Dean of Students Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier was having inappropriate relations with female students, an independent investigation has found.

jennifer Van Laar

Out of the $140,329 in monetary contributions Betty Lieu for School Board received between 2018 and 2023, 33 percent is from the campaign accounts of Ted Lieu and a handful of California politicians:

• $5,000 Asian American Forward PAC
• $13,000 Former CA State Treasurer John Chiang
• $2,500 CA Asm. Evan Low (who’s now running for Congress)
• $3,400 Former CA Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon
• $500 CA Asm. Ben Allen
• $22,913 Ted Lieu for Congress

Betty Lieu for School Board doesn’t have to file contribution reports for 2024 until after June 30; from FEC records, we know that Ted Lieu for Congress contributed another $2,000 to his wife’s campaign in January 2024, bringing his campaign’s total transfers to $24,913.

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more

Susan Crabtree:

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman went to jail for their varsity blues college admissions scandal but ZERO accountanility for Ted Lieu.

Megan Messerly and Diana Nerozzi:

At least 70 alumni of Claremont’s fellowships over the last decade serve in President Donald Trump’s administration, a POLITICO analysis found.

At least 70 participants in Claremont’s small suite of fellowships over the last decade hold or have held posts in President Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a POLITICO analysis of fellowship lists, LinkedIn profiles, and other public biographies.

Trump’s budget director Russ Vought, White House legislative director James Braid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s adviser Michael Needham and CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis are all graduates of Claremont fellowships.

“It is no secret that the first Trump administration suffered from the lack of a prebuilt network,” Ryan Williams, Claremont Institute’s president, told POLITICO. “In our small way, we have been a reliable piece of that larger network which the president has now built over the last several years.”

Long viewed as an intellectual home for a strain of conservatism skeptical of globalism, hostile to the administrative state and rooted in a close reading of the Founding Fathers, Claremont for decades operated more at the margins of Washington’s governing mainstream.

That began to change with Trump’s ascent, with Claremont’s rise in Washington over the last decade closely tracking the president’s. Even before his first election, some Claremont conservatives — or “Claremonsters,” as they’re sometimes known — saw Trump as an unlikely but effective catalyst to transform Washington. Its leaders made an early bet that his disruption would create space for their ideas to take root in government — and it’s paid off.

In Trump’s Washington, Claremont occupies a niche that few other groups attempt — a hybrid of political philosophy, training and personnel cultivation.

Lindsay Ellis:

The “talent is everywhere” mantra adopted by U.S. employers when the job market was white hot is giving way to a more traditional entry-level recruiting strategy: hire from a few select universities.

Instead of one or two passes through 45 to 50 schools each year, GE Appliances now attends four or five events each semester at a slimmer shortlist of 15 select universities that includes Purdue and Auburn.

Bill, a financial technology firm, is focused on recruiting heavily from colleges near its corporate offices in San Jose, Calif., and Draper, Utah.

And McKinsey, the white-shoe consulting firm that expanded its recruitment efforts well beyond the Ivy League in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, recently removed inclusive language from its career page that said, “We hire people, not degrees.”

Gary Rushkin:

Today, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled against our efforts to compel the University of North Carolina to disclose roughly 50,000 pages of documents, mostly of Prof. Ralph Baric, mostly about his work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possibly containing clues about the origins of COVID-19.

Even though the NC Court of Appeals agreed that the NC Public Records Act “is intended to be liberally construed” and “exemptions must be construed narrowly,” it held in support of a broad reading of the university research exemption, and against our efforts to make these documents public.

We are disappointed in today’s result. We believe that the public has a right to know where the Covid pandemic may have come from. We believe that the University of North Carolina, as an institution of higher learning, should help the public understand the lessons of the pandemic, and not obscure or bury them.

We are evaluating our legal options and potential next steps. #FOIA

usrtk.org/wp-content/upl…

Wilson Times:

A North Carolina court’s decision to shield UNC virus research under public records exemptions exposes deep transparency gaps and strengthens calls for a constitutional Sunshine Amendment.

Quinton Klabon:

• 75,126, +1,236 more than 2024
• 9.5% of all students attend outside district
• +2,554 applications, +448 rejections
• out up: Two Rivers, Portage, Baraboo, Marshfield
• in up: Westosha Union, Ripon, Middleton
• highest/lowest counts below

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Where Have All The Students Gone? 1995-2024

Anna Stokke:

The EMS Online Lecture Series on Mathematics Education starts next week!

🗓️ Friday, 9 January 2026 – 19:00 CET

🎙️ Anna Stokke – Why foundational math skills matter and how to improve them

▶️ Watch on YouTube (live): youtube.com/c/EuropeanMath…

ℹ️ Info: euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lectu…

from Sorting to Strategic Agents
(2022) pdf, print, school program

This book was written to support what was, during its operation from 2020-23, the most advanced high school math/CS track in the USA. It culminated in high school students doing masters/PhD-level coursework (reproducing academic research papers in artificial intelligence, building everything from scratch in Python).
“One of the best parts of reading Justin Skycak’s textbook for Eurisko (which covers a vast array of topics) is the number of times you go “Oooh here’s that cool algorithm I’ve vaguely heard about… wait that’s it? That’s the core idea? I did not expect you can explain it so simply!” If art is knowing what to leave out, this book is a masterwork.” — Julian

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more.

By Toluwani Osibamowo

Texas is now the first state in the U.S. to eliminate American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, ending the state’s 42-year-long reliance on the national organization.

The Texas Supreme Court issued an orderTuesday finalizing a tentative September opinion, asserting the ABA should “no longer have the final say” on which law school graduates can take the bar exam — a requirement to becoming a licensed lawyer in each state.

“The Court advised that it intends to provide stability, certainty, and flexibility to currently approved law schools by guaranteeing ongoing approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA,” reads the order signed by all nine justices.

The change means law school graduates who want to practice in Texas are no longer required to attend an ABA-accredited school. The power to approve those law schools now rests solely with the state’s highest civil court.

Melissa Whitler:

Three senior leaders in the finance department of Minneapolis Public Schools have been placed on administrative leave, according to two people with knowledge of the personnel decisions, just as the district begins its annual budget process. 

Administration of the state’s fourth largest school district placed the three leaders on leave Friday, according to the two people familiar with the moves. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The officials placed on leave are Ibrahima Diop, senior finance officer; Tarior Chapinduka, executive director of finance; and Aaron Gilbert, controller. 

When reached by phone, Gilbert would not confirm her employment with the district and would not provide further comment. Diop and Chapinduka did not respond to voice messages left seeking comment.

Donnie Belcher, executive director of communications, said the district could not comment on the personnel changes due to personnel privacy laws.

The school board is set to vote Tuesday night to designate certain financial authorizations to Senior Executive Officer Ryan Strack. These designations were previously held by Diop.

The removal of finance department leadership comes at a crucial time for the district. The district expects a $30 million gap between its revenue and expenses next school year, or roughly 4% of the annual budget. . This deficit comes despite the district cutting more than $70 million in expenses during its last budget cycle, and voters approving a $20 million increase to the district’s operating capital levy in 2024.

The district failed to complete its annual financial audit by the state deadline of December 31. The district’s auditor, Bergen KDV, told the board on December 9, 2025, that the delay was because the district’s finance department had failed to provide the necessary information on time. The auditors expect to finish by the end of January.

Quinton Klabon:

35% means schools are spending ~$2,480,000,000 just on special education this year, ~$19,300 per student (plus ~$16,500 general).

36% would be ~$2,420,000,000 and ~$18,800.
37% would be ~$2,360,000,000 and ~$18,400.

Per student costs rose over $1,000, way over inflation.

Texas Comptroller

The Bond, Tax, and Project Database contains:

• a table with basic bond-related information;
• a details report for each individual submitted bond proposal that was voted on; and
• a downloadable spreadsheet containing bond-related information throughout Texas.

Each submitted bond proposal that has been voted on is reported once to the Texas Comptroller (Government Code, Chapter 403).

The Comptroller is required to develop and maintain a database containing current and historical information on taxes imposed and bonds issued.

Select Committee on the CCP:

The Department of Education has released a new online portal where the American people can see how much foreign money is being given to American universities. The portal – which is online at foreignfundinghighered.gov – lists China as the fourth biggest foreign contributor, giving more than $4 billion to American universities. China moves to second on the list when including an additional $1.9 billion from Hong Kong.

“Secretary McMahon and the Trump administration have done tremendous work to bring transparency to our universities. Through this portal we can all see that China has given nearly $6 billion to our nation’s universities in order to transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent to China,” said Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar. “Passing the SAFE Research Act and the DETERRENT Act will protect students and the taxpayer-funded research being done on our nation’s campuses.”

The top three recipients of money from mainland China were New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. The top three recipients of money from Hong Kong were Harvard, Yale University, and Stanford.

America 250

Learn about the Presidential 1776 Award: a history competition of a lifetime, supported by resources from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation that covers the road to independence and the ideas that shaped our nation.

Luis Garicano

I am often approached by students and other young people for advice about their careers. In the past, my answers were often based on a piece of advice I myself got from Bengt Holmstrom: “when in doubt, choose the job where you will learn more.” In the last few years, there is a new variable to consider: the likelihood that artificial intelligence will automate all or large pieces of the job you do. Given that, what should a student choose today? The answers below are motivated by a book on artificial intelligence and the organization of work on which I am currently working with Jin Li and Yanhui Wu.

One way of thinking about this is that all knowledge work varies along one important spectrum: messiness. On one end, there is one defined task to execute, say helping clients fill their taxes. You get the expenses and payslips on email, you use some rules to put them on a form, you obtain a response. Over time, you become better at this task, and get a higher salary. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a wide bundle of complex tasks. Running a factory, or a family, involves many different tasks that are very hard to specify in advance.

James Hankins:

You are right. We don’t expect the book will be usable in unionized public schools. It’s written for classical schools, where students have a much larger vocabulary, more discipline, and a higher level of reading comprehension. The book can be read by 11th-12th graders and college students. There is a “young readers” edition in the works for the lower grades, and we are organizing summer seminars for classical school teachers to help them teach the book.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Carmen Nesbitt

About half of Utah’s third-graders are not reading at grade level, according to a new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Neither are nearly half of Utah’s kindergarteners through second graders, the study found.

The analysis, commissioned by the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, comes about two weeks before the start of Utah’s next legislative session and “underscores the urgent need for coordinated early literacy initiatives,” a news release on the report states.

Third grade marks a crucial moment in a child’s academic career and future success, the report notes. That’s because after third grade, reading becomes the primary way students are expected to absorb information across all subjects. 

Those who have not mastered it risk falling behind. And the report notes many Utah students who are not proficient readers are moving on to the next grade.

“Children shape Utah’s future, and their ability to read proficiently by the end of third grade plays a central role in the opportunities they have,” the report states.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Enjoyiana Nururdin, Erin Gretzinger and Olivia Herken:

Two of the board’s seven seats are up for election, and both races are poised to be contested. Board members serve three-year terms.

Seat 6 incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham faces Daniella Molle, a qualitative researcher at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Seat 7 incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen is being challenged by Dana Colussi-Lynde, an operations manager at CDW, a Fitchburg-based information technology company.

——-

Chris Rickert:

Over the last five years, eight elections for the board have been uncontested, three have been contested, and one featured an incumbent running against a registered write-in candidate.

——-

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Jonathan H. Adler:

Today’s New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court’s decisions are increasingly tilted toward the interests of the rich, and suggesting that this may play a role in rising economic inequality. Here’s how the NYT story begins:

Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first, required of all federal officials, is a promise to support the Constitution. The second, a judicial oath, is more specific. It requires them, among other things, to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”

A new study being released on Monday from economists at Yale and Columbia contends that the Supreme Court has in recent decades fallen short of that vow.

The study, called “Ruling for the Rich,” concludes that the wealthy have the wind at their backs before the justices and that a good way to guess the outcome of a case is to follow the money.

The study, “Ruling for the Rich: The Supreme Court Over Time,” by Andrea Prat, Fiona Scott Morton, and Jacob Spitz, was posted as an NBER working paper, and has not yet been peer-reviewed or (to my knowledge) accepted anywhere for publication. But that did not stop it from getting a the full-article treatment in the NYT.

Having looked at the study, I don’t think it does much of anything to reliably substantiate its claims. It is both conceptually muddled and poorly executed. At most it shows that (surprise!) Republican Supreme Court nominees have become more conservative over time (a point I made to the Times), but that is hardly a revelation.

The biggest problem with the study’s design is its adoption of overly simplistic conceptions of what makes a decision “pro-rich” or “pro-poor.” Here is what the authors say they are doing:

Erin Gretzinger:

At the end of the semester, the UW-Madison students presented their findings to school district leaders in the Doyle Administration Building. Superintendent Joe Gothard thanked the students for their work, emphasizing the importance of better understanding the families opting out of enrolling in Madison’s schools and 4K programs.

“This is what we do in this room right here,” Gothard told the students. “We talk about these factors all the time, so it’s really great to have some new ideas about ways that we might present and think about our own practices.”

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Timothy Martin:

South Korea’s infamously difficult college-entrance exam can open the door to a promising future—but just 3% of students who took it recently landed a top-tier score for English, half of last year’s rate. A top official overseeing the test’s creation resigned in disgrace.

Colleges typically look only at a student’s test score when choosing whom to accept or reject. The pressure is so great that some superstitious students avoid washing their hair or trimming their nails as the single exam day every November approaches—fearful knowledge might slip away. The roughly eight-hour test covers various topics such as math, Korean history and English.

To get a top-tier result for English, a student with a perfect score on the listening section could miss no more than three of the test’s 28 reading-comprehension problems. These are the five toughest, according to EBS, South Korea’s public education broadcaster. See how you would fare.

1 OF 5
Giving clients sufficient opportunity to react to your designs while in progress is a key to professional success. Similarly, involving prospective building users as well as clients is even more valuable in the long run. Say your client is a large corporation, such as a health care provider. While the hospital administration may serve as your client, no doubt the perspectives of administration personnel will differ significantly from those of doctors, interns, residents, nurses, and other medical staff who use the building regularly. In addition, the experiences of patients and visitors who use the building irregularly, often as a result of life-threatening emergencies, are altogether different as well. Understanding how each type of user experiences the current medical environment as well as how each reacts to your prospective designs inevitably produces a better building. People are likely to be more satisfied with a new building or addition if they ________________________________________. For a large institution, this can translate into increased productivity on the job, reduced absenteeism, less turnover, and lower costs.

Christina Boggess:

I am done lending my name, my vote, and my silence to a broken, corrupt, and morally bankrupt system that no longer serves the children or families of this state.

The corruption inside the Utah State Board of Education and the broader educational establishment is not subtle—it is brazen, pervasive, and rotting the soul of public education. Nearly every decision is now driven by not-so-hidden agendas, political cowardice, financial kickbacks, and raw personal ambition—not by what is best for students. The USBE has become a closed club that wages open war on the minds, values, and innocence of our children while systematically stripping parents of any meaningful voice. This is more than mere incompetence; it is betrayal on a grand scale – by the very people you elected.

Layer upon layer of dysfunction—mirrored and magnified in the Utah Legislature—has turned governance into a circus of gridlock, self-preservation, and faux theatrical outrage that accomplishes nothing. Good ideas are buried, brave voices are punished, and the status quo is protected at all costs. The chaos is not accidental; it is the design of those who profit from it.
I ran for this office to fight for you—your children, your values, your right to be heard. Instead, I have been forced to watch as even the loudest “conservative” voices fold, trade their votes for favor and money, or abandon every promise they made on the campaign trail. The Republican Party platform means nothing inside those walls. The Word of the Lord means even less. Your concerns—about pornography in libraries, radical gender ideology in classrooms, the erosion of academic excellence, and the assault on parental rights—are mocked, ignored, or drowned out by the shrill demands of special interests and the timid silence of those who fear losing their seat more than losing their soul.

I will not play this game any longer. I refuse to be a prop in their theatre of fake reform.

Chris Rickert:

More than 10 years after the Madison School District’s implemented its Behavior Education Plan, one of the plan’s primary goals — reducing racial disparities in discipline — remains unmet.

David Blaska:

Madison’s public schools have a “coordinator for progressive discipline.” Things we never knew, thanks to Chris Rickert, writing for our favorite local morning newspaper. Yes, you with your hand up in the back: Isn’t “Progressive discipline” like saying “peaceful war”? (George Orwell, report to the principal’s office.) 

In the 10 years since Jennifer Cheatham cursed Madison students with her race-obsessed Behavior Education Plan, “the district hasn’t been able to reduce the ‘stubborn disproportionalities” of black students representing 62% of the students tossed out of school despite comprising 23% of enrollment. 

If there is anything a Woke educrat hates (the list is long), it is stubborn disproportionalities — the theory being that if there are five roosters and five hens, each should produce the same amount of eggs.

——-

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

William Galston:

At the conclusion of the 20th century, America’s leadership was uncontested. We had the world’s strongest economy and most powerful military, bolstered by an unequaled system of alliances. Americans from the bottom to the top enjoyed rising real incomes. The federal budget ran a surplus for four consecutive years, from 1998 to 2001. Despite their differences, the political parties were able to reach agreement on important issues, including on fiscal policy, education, welfare, the environment and protecting Americans with disabilities.

An era of folly began in the new century. Leaders of both political parties supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization on terms that allowed a flood of cheap imports, contributing to a loss of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs (one-third of the prior total) between the end of the Clinton administration and January 2010. Few displaced workers received help making the transition to new jobs, and many suffered a decline in their standard of living, laying the foundation for an era of populist resentment.

The 9/11 attacks devastated the nation. President George W. Bush’s overreaction was also damaging. Any president worth his salt would have struck back against the terrorists who killed thousands of Americans. But the Bush administration went much further, launching a prolonged war in Afghanistan and Iraq and eventually proclaiming the grandiose goal of “ending tyranny in our world.” By focusing so much attention and resources on the “global war on terror,” America all but ignored the rising threat from China, whose economic gains were translated into a massive military buildup. The Mideast campaigns soured many Americans on international engagement.

Madison School District PDF:

“Strategic Framework Goal 1”:
+10 percentage points in literacy proficiency
+10 percentage points in students’ math proficiency
+3 percentage points in 4-year HS completion

“Strategic Framework Goal 2”:
+15 percentage points in percentage of students with annual attendance rate of +90%
100% of district departments and schools with documented improvement plans,
including universal and targeted strategies, and demonstrate evidence of PDSA cycles

“Strategic Framework Goal 2”:
+15 percentage points in literacy proficiency
+15 percentage points in students’ math proficiency
+6 percentage points in 4-year HS completion
+25 percentage points in percentage of students with annual attendance rate of +90%

Since 2021–2022, Student Services allocation increased by +28.9 FTE,
resulting in more time and resources available for students

7,095 staff for 25,003 students = 3.52 student to staff ratio…..

The 2025-2026 taxpayer funded budget is $668,000,000 or $26,716 per student.

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Hugo C. Chiasson and Elise A. Spenner:

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.

In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.

“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.

The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom.

Garber’s tenure in Massachusetts Hall has been defined by sustained controversy over free speech on campus. He inherited a campus deeply divided over the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — and facing heavy external criticism for its handling of campus responses in its wake.

Robert Pondiscio

A Republican Michigan state legislator has proposedexempting people without children in public schools from paying school-related property taxes. In a news release, Steve Carra, who has served in office since 2021, says it’s “fundamentally unjust to force people—including seniors, empty-nesters, those who pay for private school, and those without children—to subsidize a government education system they do not use.” It’s especially unfair, he continues “because our broken system spends a record amount of money yet results continue to plummet.”

At first glance, the idea has intuitive appeal: Why should people pay for a service they do not use? But while the proposal may sound fiscally tidy (or like a blunt-force accountability measure aimed at discrediting low-performing district schools), it rests on a deeply un-conservative misunderstanding of what public education is—and why a free society has long treated its costs as a shared obligation.

Public education is not a consumer good, like a gym membership or a streaming service. It is a civic institution. Conservatives have always recognized that some goods must be funded collectively because everyone benefits from their existence, not merely from direct use. You hope that you will never need the fire department, but you still pay for it because you benefit from living in a community where houses don’t burn down. The same logic applies to educating children.

Jack Goldsmith

But here is the reality. Congress has given the president a gargantuan global military force with few constraints and is AWOL in overseeing what the president does with it. Courts won’t get involved in reviewing unilateral presidential uses of force. And no country plausibly could stop the U.S. action in Venezuela.

That means that in practice the only normative legal framework for presidential war powers that matters derives from executive branch precedents and legal opinions. The Justice Department, if asked, easily could have drafted an opinion based on these precedents and opinions to justify the invasion of Venezuela.

Below is my quickly written explanation for this conclusion, but of course the analysis is preliminary since there is much we do not yet know.

Domestic Law

The main precedent DOJ could cite is President George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989 to arrest and bring strongman General Manuel Noriega to justice in the United States, in part for drug trafficking. Some will seek to distinguish the Noriega matter from the Venezuela invasion on the grounds that Panama Defense Forces had recently killed a U.S. Marine and the Panamanian National Assembly had declared that a state of war existed between the Republic of Panama and the United States.

But the Panama precedent will nonetheless matter to the Venezuela attack due to this 1989 opinion by then-Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr, issued six months before the invasion. That opinion justified FBI arrests in foreign countries under domestic law even if doing so violated international law. It specifically concluded:

Stuart Chambers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is certainly in vogue these days. Within post-secondary institutions, it is rapidly reshaping the pedagogical landscape. Some academics maintain that AI enriches the student learning experience, whereas others believe it enhances critical thinking.

Tech enthusiasts regard AI as a vital component of the contemporary university. Ted Brodheim, CIO adviser for education at Zoom, suggests that AI has become “the backbone of today’s learning ecosystem” in higher education. Likewise, Evan Solomon, Canada’s first-ever minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, contends that AI is having a “transformative effect” on education curriculum.

null

Such high praise has convinced many educators to jump on the AI bandwagon; however, I’m not one of them. As an undergraduate sociology professor, I bucked the trend by banning AI for all classroom assignments. Here’s why.

Eugene Volokh:

Reed v. Reed, an appeal decided Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Superior Court (Judge Mary Jane Bowes, joined by Judges Mary Murray and Jill Beck), involved a paternal grandfather seeking shared legal custody and partial physical custody of two children (N.R. and M.R., ages 8 and 10 as of the time of the appellate decision). Many states allow grandparents shared custody in some situations, especially when their child (the grandchildren’s parent) is dead, as was the case here. But, to oversimplify to some extent, they generally require some showing of failings on the part of the other parent.

In this case, the trial court did indeed rule for the grandfather, but the appellate court disagreed. An excerpt from the trial court’s opinion (other portions of the trial court’s opinion are discussed by the appellate opinion, so I haven’t excerpted them here, but you can see a lot more here):

Erin Gretzinger:

The biggest achievement is building a culture of care — care for our students, care for our families and care for our staff. Oftentimes, because there’s so much talent already here, what you’re trying to do is just create the conditions that allow for the power of education to happen every single day, and just remove the barriers so the work can work, can happen. …

You see on everything we have that it’s “excellence grounded in equity.” And I just always want to make sure that when I say “equity” — when we say “equity” in the Verona Area School District — equity means that each student has access to the resources that they need to thrive in our society. I fully understand that the word has gotten politicized, but we have held firm to our stance through our equity framework. 

This is not a political statement. This is an action that anyone — if you break down the true definition of what we’re saying — you want us to remove barriers to allow access for any student to receive the resources that they need.

—-

1,855 Verona 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group.

Nidhi Sachdeva:

In December, Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office released its latest student-testing results, and delivered a sobering message: Only about half of the province’s Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in mathematics, and Grade 3 performance sits at just 64 per cent, inching up only slightly over three years. 

These numbers are not just statistics. They represent children – real students – moving through school with shaky foundations in the very subject that underpins science, technology, skilled trades, financial literacy and problem-solving. 

Put differently, of the nearly 134,000 Grade 6 students who participated, only about 65,000 met provincial benchmarks. Of those, roughly 11,000 reached the highest level of proficiency. In a province that prides itself on innovation and global competitiveness, that is a troublingly small fraction. 

Now imagine two Grade 6 classes heading out for recess. Of the 60 students playing outside, statistically about 30 are struggling to meet math expectations. Only a handful are achieving at the highest level. We would never accept this kind of performance in health care, engineering or aviation. Yet in classrooms, we have normalized it.

——

more.

Kimberly Wethal

UW-Madison should centralize much of its budgeting and human resources to avoid future abuses of its policies, according to a third-party report requested after the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion chief was demoted for excess spending.

The recommendations, created by outside financial services firm Deloitte, said HR should be realigned to give more oversight in hiring and compensation, salary adjustments should be streamlined and the finance department should create roles that focus on future budget planning and business partnerships.

OECD:

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the world’s largest survey of teachers and principals. In 2024, 280 000 educators from 55 education systems shared insights into their working conditions, professional development and the realities of the modern classroom. In this edition, Results from TALIS 2024, teachers reveal if and how they use artificial intelligence, why they choose teaching, and if they wish to remain in the profession. Data from TALIS enables governments to make policies that improve teaching and learning conditions in their schools.

Teachers’ usage of artificial intelligence varies tremendously

Teachers and education systems have a responsibility to embrace artificial intelligence while also protecting students against its harmful effects. Singapore and the United Arab Emirates are leading the way in this regard. Around 75% of teachers in these systems are using AI. Importantly, teachers in these systems are also most likely to report having received professional learning in using artificial intelligence.

Novice teachers receive more mentorship but are still allocated to difficult environments

Being a novice teacher can be an intimidating experience. No amount of training can prepare someone for the feeling of being directly responsible for hundreds of students. Mentorship can greatly ease the transition from initial teacher education to actual classroom teaching. TALIS data show that novice teachers who have mentors also have greater job satisfaction and well-being. Policymakers also need to consider where novice teachers are teaching. Teacher allocation mechanisms often privilege seniority, which can place the least experienced teachers in the most difficult educational environments.

FutureDad:

‘Everything is incentives, the rest is commentary.’ – Stephen Landsburg

The world’s fertility rate has crashed in the last few decades. Some selected examples from 1950 to 2021 are1: –

South Korea’s dropped from 5.72 to 0.82.

Italy’s dropped from 2.45 to 1.21.

Morocco’s dropped from 7.18 to 2.26.

Canada’s dropped from 3.31 to 1.46.

Ecuador’s dropped from 6.09 to 2.20.

New Zealand’s dropped from 3.49 to 1.62.

I cite a country from every continent, both emerging market and developed, to demonstrate the multi-regional distribution of the problem. No region on Earth is in good shape, fertility-wise. This is a crucial point that is evaded by many commentators, usually to then bemoan their own country’s lack of child care facilities, affordable housing or some other pet peeve. These are lies by omission.

It’s a curious phenomenon that a global problem with real-world civilisation-ending effects is so badly understood. I will select a recent well-attended example. In a 2025 Kurzgesagt YouTube video about South Korea’s demographic collapse, with over 10 million views2, most of the top-liked viewers’ comments cited a non-reason as a reason. It’s evidence of the lazy thinking of the modern world and provides a startling example of the ‘unwisdom’ of crowds. It behoves us therefore to be particularly careful in our analysis. A problem of this civilisational scale obligates a cross-examination of the assumptions and the counter-examples before identifying the actual cause.

———

choose life.

Substack link:

The Affidavit involves a Minnesota socialist welfare program, funded largely by Medicaid, called the “Integrated Community Supports” (ICS) program. It was a “waivered” program under Medicaid rules — as are several other Minnesota programs now being investigated. If approved, the waiver means states are allowed to deviate from standard Medicaid rules for covered “services” in order to deliver such services in more flexible and targeted ways. 

These services have almost NOTHING to do with providing “medical care” for the poor as most believe Medicaid was intended to do. 

States ask permission from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to “waive” certain Medicaid requirements for a program to be funded. If approved, the state can offer non-traditional services — not otherwise subject to reimbursement with Medicaid dollars — by limiting eligibility to specific groups and/or providing services in community settings rather than leaving the clients in institutions.

Waivers are designed to help keep people out of nursing homes or similar group- home arrangements or institutions, provide in-home care and and community-based services on a one-on-one basis with the care providers, be an experimental lab to test innovative alternative care models, and to control costs while maintaining or improving care.

CJ Ciaramella:

Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID.

But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.

In a December 11 court filing, Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of DHS’ Mobile, Alabama, office, stated that, “REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.”

Danyela Souza Egorov:

New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is inheriting a public school system that has made some progress in student learning but is completely dysfunctional in terms of financial stability and operations. And his campaign promises are likely to worsen the system’s flaws.

New York City’s public schools once educated more than a million students, but the system’s enrollment has been steadily declining. Since 2020, it has lost 10 percent of its K-12 students. Even with the expansion of pre-K and 3-K programs for young children, the schools are serving 115,000 fewer students than they did seven years ago.

Yet the budget for the city Department of Education (NYC DOE) has greatly increased, rising from $33 billion in 2019 to over $40 billion this year. This disconnect between enrollment and budget has led to the highest per-pupil spending in the nation, which the Citizens Budget Commission estimates will reach $42,000 this year.